


hold on to each other

by strikereurekapitcrew



Series: repetition [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Julia Burnsides Lives, Raven's Roost should have its own warning, Story 5: The Eleventh Hour, dwelf julia, eighth bird julia burnsides, julia bursides lives, mentions of child death, playing fast and loose with d&d, playing fast and loose with humanoid anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 08:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15190739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikereurekapitcrew/pseuds/strikereurekapitcrew
Summary: Julia meets the Chalice, and her mistakes.





	hold on to each other

**Author's Note:**

> Title from June by Florence + the Machine because... well.  
> Preemptive apologies to all of WDA for... this.

The white space is… unsettling. Like an uncomfortable number of Julia’s dreams, it’s hollow, but unlike those dreams, she is not alone. There’s a little girl, and a familiar prize in her hands, and she looks at the dwelvish woman as if she’s looking  _ through  _ her.

_ It’s you _ , she had said. She had said in a voice both ancient and young, child and Chalice.

Julia didn't know what it meant, but now, in this isolated expanse, she thinks she's starting to get it. 

And, as she knows from experience, because she  _ thinks _ that she's starting to make sense of things, she's not making any sense at all. 

“June-”

“You said that you would listen,” the possessed girl reminds her, and she bites her tongue, feeling thoroughly scolded.

“Okay,” Julia glances around herself, turning in a slow circle. There is nothing, just more and more white emptiness. “Show me what you've got.”

And they do.

Chalice and Girl, scrolling back through a life, a life much longer than it should be, because Julia is only in her thirties, isn’t she?

And then there’s static.

Static?

_ ‘Voidfish _ ?’ her mind supplies the suggestion. It’s the only static that she knows is like  _ this,  _ but that’s not right. How can it be right, when this span of time is far too long to be  _ her _ life? Even through her confusion, Julia manages to convince herself to look down at the Relic’s avatar, and there’s something like shock when she sees the confusion and distress laid bare on June’s young face.

“This isn’t right, you're all just- missing-” the Girl-Relic breathes, and there’s something like vindication as well.

Julia watches the static. There are moments that seem like they’re starting to ease up, only for the white noise to crash in harder, and she’s not sure if that’s just the projection, or if it’s happening inside her head.

_ The feeling of dying is familiar, and that sinking realization is what has Julia rolling away from Magnus and vomiting into the hard clay outside of Refuge. _

When they reach the end, Julia is… small. She doesn’t remember any of this, not in anything but vague shadows. She can’t be more than six years old, but the sky above her is not blue. It’s a soft lavender, and there are two suns and she doesn’t remember this. There’s a crackling in her head, and she knows that this is in her head, that this is real and that she should remember, but she doesn’t remember this. She tries to reach for it, like shadows in the fog, but there’s nothing. 

_ She doesn’t remember this. _

Before Julia can grasp the thoughts, she’s thrown forward. This time, it’s faster, and the static doesn’t seem as bad as she knows it is.

The sound that leaves her when they stop at Raven’s Roost is like a sob, an aborted wail of anguish stopped only by the blunt bite of teeth into her palm.

Magnus is… tall. Younger and beautiful, not nearly as world-weary. His rapier is at Kalen’s throat, blood welling up from the tip like a threat. 

A small hand slips into her metal one, and June leads her around the scene. They have Kalen and his men surrounded, the day that the revolution ended. Julia stands at Magnus’ side, her hair tied back in a cardinal red headscarf, and her eyes are hard. It’s subtle to an onlooker, but Julia remembers this. She remembers the archers waiting on the rooftop across the square, and the fleeting thoughts that she had while standing in the crowd, at her eventual husband’s side.

Magnus sheaths his rapier, but the others do not, weapons and magic trained on the governor who has tortured them for so long and the beaten and bloodied men that still support him. 

“Leave this place with your lives,” he says. 

“ _ Or else join your men where you stand. This city is not yours _ ,” Julia breathes, and she feels June’s hand twitch in hers.

“You remember this well, don’t you?” The Chalice asks her. “You think about this at night, when you cannot sleep.”

“The archers on the rooftops were waiting for my signal.” It’s the first time she’s ever admit it aloud, and she doesn’t even think that her husband knows about this. “If I had given it, they would’ve killed him before he made it past the edge of the market square.”

“You could’ve stopped him from coming back-”

“No,” Julia interjects. “No, I won’t change this.”

 

The image before her changes, Magnus with a canvas-wrapped rocking chair on his shoulder, his lips pressed to hers.

_ “I love you, Jules.” _

_ “Be careful with the goats! They get skittish on the main trails!” _

The day Magnus left for Neverwinter. Two days later, everything fell apart.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to change here,” Julia breathes.

“You do,” the Chalice insists, and as Julia stands by the echo of her younger self, still whole, not yet broken and remade, she sees it.

It takes her a second, remembering this feeling. It had only been three months, and she wrote it off as being on edge from everything boiling down, but watching in hindsight, she’s sure now. A young man who had staunchly supported Kalen, making note of Magnus leaving and disappearing. June tugs her hand and they follow him, Julia glancing back to watch Steven and herself go back into the shop before they round the corner and the Hammer and Tongs is gone. 

They follow the young man as he moves through crowded places with the grace of a Tabaxi rogue, following him off one of the connecting bridges as he moves away from the main city. It’s unsettling, moving straight through a wall of rock, but the cavern they come out into is one that Julia knows.

She grits her teeth as she watches the boy relay information to Kalen. Kalen, who grins maniacally with the knowledge that Raven’s Roost’s hero and leader is gone and they are, in a word, unprotected. Kalen, who just days later, bombs the support column for her home.

“You saw him. You thought you were hallucinating, but you knew what you saw. If you had said something-”

“If I had said something, even if I was afraid of not being taken seriously, I could’ve aided in evacuating civilians and investigating the cliffs.” Julia’s voice shakes, because she knows what comes next. “I won’t. I won’t go back.”

And they move forward, two days. Julia stands in the shop across from Steven, a plain looking rod in her hand and another in her belt, a maul on her back. She’s getting ready to go out on a scouting trip, as the free-roaming goats have been taking injuries and they don’t know what’s hunting them, but if they don’t find out, they’re going to lose a large portion of the herd. The Chalice is getting desperate, she knows, because why  _ else _ would she have seen two mistakes and now a third? She knows then that the boys have said no, and they’re relying on her, but the rumble under her feet takes her back to the Roost and the fear that filled her in that moment. 

Steven doesn’t miss a beat, tossing Julia a Bag of Holding to tie to her waist. 

“You can move faster than I do these days, my love. Get everyone you can, go,” he tells her, and then climbs the stairs. The Chalice leads her outside as the echo of a memory of herself goes running out the door.

A bell rings, an alarm, and suddenly people are outside.

Rushing the bridge.

Running for their lives.

And in the middle of it all: Julia, five years and a lifetime younger, stands and guides them, heedless of the fact that she might die. Her people are more important, and with all she knows of the events that follow, a much older Julia’s eyes begin to fill with hot tears. June’s grip on her hand is the only thing that keeps the bard’s knees from going out from under her. She doesn't need to see to remember that day. 

The pillar begins to fall, and there’s more running. Julia is in the middle of the bridge, so many people halfway across when it snaps. Her neighbor’s youngest child slips from her grasp, her small hand a whisper of flesh and then gone. 

She screams. The wind rips her red bandana, _cardinal red_ , from her damp hair. The smoke burns her eyes and she can't see. 

Above the sounds of screams, the smoke and fire, she remembers how clear the sound of an immovable rod clicking into stasis was. She remembers the jar of her shoulder as the bar stopped her fall, the anguish at watching it all happen. She remembers feeling like a coward that she's still alive, remembers her hand starting to sweat as she swung out and locked the second rod, bridging the gap to the cliff side, remembers how close they were but how far away from salvation. 

She remembers Malachi's strong grip pulling her to land, her friends pawing at her, remembers shoving people away and running so hard she felt her lungs might begin to bleed. 

 

She remembers reaching the wreckage and vomiting. Screaming her voice so raw that she still spoke with a rasp to present day.

It's when the sound of a sword being drawn rings out above the sound of clattering debris and fire that Julia opens her eyes again. 

“Isn't this poetic?” Kalen seethes, standing over her. “Get up, Julia. You look pathetic on your knees.”

She's crumpled on the ground, ash falling on her head. Watching herself, it's almost as if Julia can feel the crackling energy of magic at her fingertips before the yellow light fills her palms. 

“76 people died,” the Chalice tells her as they watch Julia launch herself at Kalen, tear streaks washing the ash from her face in stark lines. “Including your father.”

Kalen swings the sword for her head and she ducks under it, moving with a ferocity that she's not exhibited since. 

“You lost your home-”

A magic missile collides with Kalen’s face.

“Your people-”

His sword catches her thigh, digging a deep, slashing wound into it, a scar she still carries.

“And ultimately, four hours after this, your left arm.”

She crumples from the pain of the leg wound, left hand outstretched and glowing that vibrant golden yellow. Kalen stills, fights against the Enchantment she's burrowing into his mind. The glow begins to turn red and Julia remembers it as it happened, the feeling of her mind going blank from shock, bones and tendons snapping  _ inside _ her arm as she fought him. The reminder of just why using an arcane focus of some kind was a cardinal rule of magic use  _ for a reason. _

“That's enough-” and it's ragged and desperate, barely leaving her lips.

“You could have killed him here, too. Avenged them.”

“I said that's  _ fucking _ enough,” Julia snaps, and the room goes white again. 

They're in the Davy Lamp and she is the most shaken of the four of them. The tears are still streaming down her face and she feels Taako reach for her, shrugging off the weight of his hand. 

“No matter what you show me, you can't undo the past,” Julia tells the Chalice. 

“So you won't take it? Not even for them?” It asks. 

“Not  _ even _ ,” she hisses firmly. 

It sighs, shaking June’s head. 

“Then I have one more offer for you. Just one, and then you can have June.”

 

They let Phandalin burn. 


End file.
